10 mistakes that will kill a forum

[butters]

1. Excessive Ads - Hey, there’s nothing wrong with making some money off your forum. But, when your advertisements begin to take up more space on your forum than your content, you’ve got a problem. People visit forums to talk to other people with similar interests. They want to share their ideas or ask questions. They DON’T want to have to sort through 3 pages of ads, to find one page worth of content. Think of it this way, you don’t tune in to your favorite TV show to watch the commercials do you? Well neither do your visitors.

2. Cliques - OK look, your forum is supposed to be an online community, not an online clique. If your community is not open and welcoming to new members and fresh ideas, your forum will quickly stop growing, become stagnant, and eventually die out. People want to be accepted. It’s perfectly fine to have a group of friends in your forum, just be sure you don’t isolate yourself from the rest of the web.

3. Trolls - never a good thing for a forumTrolls - Everyone’s encountered a troll whether you knew it or not. The Urban Dictionary defines a troll as “someone who gets pleasure by typing annoying/controversial/offensive words on internet forums or message boards.” If you run a forum long enough, probably every one of your members will annoy you from time to time. That’s just human nature. Trolls on the other hand, bring absolutely NO value to the forum and instead sit back and generally annoy you along with everyone else on the forum. They simply aren’t worth the hassle. To top it all of, many times, not only are trolls an annoyance, but they end up starting…

4. Fights - Now don’t think for one second that everyone on your forum will agree with each other all the time. It’s just not going to happen. In fact, you don’t even WANT it to happen. Controversy is good remember? However, there’s a BIG difference between a healthy debate/heated discussion and a fight. Once a discussion or debate devolves into name calling and personal attacks, it’s time to shut it down. If you let fights fester, they’ll begin infecting the rest of the forum and will likely end up driving away people on one, or both sides of the issue. You’ll also lose members who simply don’t want to hear the pissing and moaning anymore. The internet is a vast and wonderful place, if your site loses its appeal, your members can abandon ship and jump over to an alternative with just a few quick keystrokes.

5. You need moderators that are Kung-Fu MastersHeavy Handed Moderating - Have you ever heard the saying that “absolute power corrupts absolutely”? Or maybe, “the power’s gone to his head”? Both of these things can befall you, or your moderators if you don’t watch out for it. Forum Moderators or Administrators are given power to keep the rest of the forum in line. But, as Uncle Ben told Spiderman, with great power comes great responsibility. To continue the string of cliches, Moderators/Admin’s need to tread lightly but carry a big stick (basically they need to be Kung-Fu Masters). All forums and communities need a chain of command, but given the right situation, one Mod on an ego trip can splinter your forum while you’re on your lunch break.Don’t get me wrong, spam needs to be deleted, fight threads need to be locked, and the rules need to be enforced. However, you and your mods must always remember that your forum exists due to the contributions of your members. Arbitrarily closing threads critical of you or the forum can be dangerous and secretly deleting posts is just asking for trouble. If you’re involved in the argument, ask another moderator to step in. Take a breather, calm down, and make sure none of your decisions are motivated by anger or selfish ambitions. If you’re unsure which course of action to take, ask the rest of your staff. Whatever you do, always be open about it. When you screw up, and you will, man up and admit it.

6. Lack of Moderation - Yes, I just got done telling you that Over Moderation will kill your forum. The truth is, so will a lack of moderation. If you find yourself spending hours a day just trying to control your forum spam, it’s time to find some Mods. Get friends or family to help out or promote some trusted and long time members. And most importantly, use them. Consult them, give them a heads up before implementing changes, and listen to them when they offer up suggestions. You may even want to create a private “Moderators only” section where you can discuss any issues that pop up. But whatever you do, make sure you give your members a nice place to come. You wouldn’t invite friends over to your house if it looked like some back alley. The same holds true to your forum.

7. Don't over post. You'll smother your forum.Over Posting - Look, people don’t come to a forum to hear one person talk all the time. It’s a community, not a soap box. If you want it to be all about you, start a blog. It’s very easy to dominate a forum, especially in the early days. There’s not a lot of activity and you’re eager to keep the conversations going. But, you need to give others a chance to answer questions, give advice, or offer up their opinions. If a post goes ignored for too long, by all means reply, but you’ll smother your forum if you’re the first to reply to every single post. As the old saying goes, “Better everyone think you a fool, than to open your mouth and prove them right.” And who knows, you might even learn something…

8. Violating Privacy - This one’s a no-brainer. When people sign up for your forum, they almost always have to give you some information. Whether that’s an email address or some other bit of privileged information, don’t compromise it. Don’t sell your email list or start spamming your members with your latest chain letters. Trust me, they won’t appreciate it. See, I told you this one was simple.

9. Your site visitors aren't turtles... they want Speed!Slow Site - You remember how slow dial-up internet access used to be? It sucked right? Especially if you’d ever used a high speed connection. Well, having too many ads (yes, it’s worth mentioning again), widgets, plugins, or those cool ad-ons included in your forum can drag your site back to the dark ages. Navigating around a forum requires more clicks than on an average site, and members spend a longer than average time on your site. If every one of those clicks takes your users to a page that is slow to load, it’s going to take a LOT longer than it should to get around the site. We’re now firmly entrenched in an age of instant gratification and if your site is slow to load, your members and visitors simply won’t put up with it. They have too many other sites out there to sit around and wait for yours to get it’s act together.

10. Actually… there is no #10 - Oh wait! Over promising and under delivering. This is pretty much a good rule for life in general but it definitely applies to forums. If you tell your members you’re going to do something (add a feature, take care of a problem, listen to suggestions) then you’d better do it. Be very careful in what you promise and remember, this is a forum so everything is in print. You’d be surprised what people remember and call you on later. A couple of slip ups will likely be forgiven (they have in our case) but if you make a habit of getting people’s hopes up, only to disappoint them, don’t be surprised if you have fewer and fewer people to cry wolf to next time.

And my last bit of advice will be this… You’re going to make mistakes. It’s inevitable. But, if you follow the tips and lessons we’ve previously given you, and try to avoid things on this list, chances are, you and your forum will be able to withstand those occasional slip-ups. Most of all, be honest with your members. You’ll be surprised how much slack they’ll be willing to cut you. I hope you’ve enjoyed this brief series and as always, if you think we’re wrong, or left something out, feel free to chime in!

Source

[Ceeg]

most of those are why Gamefaqs sucks

[Luriden]

Thanks for the info?

[butters]

This was on the main page of Digg earlier and there's definitely parts of it that this forum fails on, though this forum is vastly improved over how it was only 6 months ago.

[Roofus]

Yeah, DCEmu certainly is a lot better than it used to be. There's always room for improvement though. The fact that I have no specific suggestions at the momenet says something.

BG could fall under number 5; I'd guess about 80% of active members are Staff. There's not a whole lot to do over there though, so no one's really been corrupted yet.

[Juan]

Is bizarro dead yet?

[Dr. Zoidberg]

BG could fall under number 5; I'd guess about 80% of active members are Staff. There's not a whole lot to do over there though, so no one's really been corrupted yet.

I keep you all in line with smut & candy.

As for butters list, I'll post boring answers for both forums I'm an admin at.

#1
DCEmu: No ads on the forums.
BG: No ads on the forums.

#2
DCEmu: Possibly but nothing too serious.
BG: The site is too small to worry about that.

#3
DCEmu: There have been a few here over the years but they've never been that bad compared to other forums & newsgroups.
BG: Nope

#4
DCEmu: The fighting is no worse here than it is at any other decent sized forum.
BG: No fights yet.

#5
DCEmu: Possibly some occansional problems in this area.
BG: No problems except for ian deleting/editing some of Skynet's null posts.

#6
DCEmu: No problem
BG: No problem

#7
DCEmu: No problem
BG: The mysterious BG News Bot C&P's too much but we need the content. When I eventually promote the place outside of DCEmu & DVDVR it will hopefully be cut back.

#8
DCEmu: No problems in that area.
BG: No problems in that area.

#9
DCEmu: Fine
BG: Fine

#10
DCEmu: |darc| & the boys updated the site eventually.
BG: All I offered DCEmu'ers who signed up was porn, I think they've received a fair bit of that. All I offered peeps from DVDVR was a place to post wrestling shoot interviews and they've been able to do that & more.

DCEmu's doing OK IMO, all things considered. The DC is dead so this place is never going to have a very large amount of active members again unless somebody takes over Cheatah's PSP site, updates + promotes it & gives it a few forums under the DC section.

[Sir Savant]

I keep you all in line with smut & candy.

snip


BG: All I offered DCEmu'ers who signed up was porn, I think they've received a fair bit of that. All I offered peeps from DVDVR was a place to post wrestling shoot interviews and they've been able to do that & more.

Really?

/joins

[Skynet]

Boy oh boy, does Zoidberg upload a lot of porn. I've been a proud porn loving member of BG for quite some time now. I'm the null group moderator and a global mod. Vengeance is mine now!

[Dark Schneider]

dcemus been going downhill since the bleem forum was locked.

[AuroEdge]

DCEmu would be money sauce if they brought hookers to the party more often. Seriously though, this forum reminds me of Seinfeld. There's plenty of people making a lot of noise but in the end it's all pretty much about nothing. Maybe the scene isn't dead but come on...

[donnonotin]

I love this forum. It's a pretty well rounded comunity I would say. It's odd because even though I don't play on my DC anymore I still visit it.. to think I just registered to find out how to play SNES roms on my DC when I was about 11-12. DCemulation should have my babies.

[APE]

DCEmu would be money sauce if they brought hookers to the party more often. Seriously though, this forum reminds me of Seinfeld. There's plenty of people making a lot of noise but in the end it's all pretty much about nothing. Maybe the scene isn't dead but come on...

Why do you think bizzaro branched out into everything they possible could (including stuff noone actually cares about)?

[perry]

The other forums I freguent, BlueKipper, thrive on the levels of abuse.

It's all just taken as humor. Perhaps Scouse humor.

[Juan]

DCEmu would be money sauce if they brought hookers to the party more often. Seriously though, this forum reminds me of Seinfeld. There's plenty of people making a lot of noise but in the end it's all pretty much about nothing. Maybe the scene isn't dead but come on...

Why do you think bizzaro branched out into everything they possible could (including stuff noone actually cares about)?

Hey, Harry Potter and homebrew go together. Or was it Harry Potter and money...

[TyBO]

Things I like about DCEmu:

This forum has a great bunch of level-headed, smart people, all from very different walks of life. I also think this forum has a friendlier atmosphere than most, which is one of the reasons I keep posting. #2 on the list is spot on - no one likes joining a community only to be labeled a "n00b" and judged by your post count.

Things I dislike about DCEmu:

Occasionally this forum suffers from a lack of activity... there are a few forums that are virtually dead (DreamSNES, a lot of the development forums, etc). These are just minor quibbles though.

[Veggita2099]

No real complaints about this forum. Few people seem to go nuts when you say something they don't agree with, but I suppose you have that everywhere.

[Sir Savant]

Things I like about DCEmu:

This forum has a great bunch of level-headed, smart people, all from very different walks of life. I also think this forum has a friendlier atmosphere than most, which is one of the reasons I keep posting. #2 on the list is spot on - no one likes joining a community only to be labeled a "n00b" and judged by your post count.

Things I dislike about DCEmu:

Occasionally this forum suffers from a lack of activity... there are a few forums that are virtually dead (DreamSNES, a lot of the development forums, etc). These are just minor quibbles though.

Lies. New people should not go to null. Wait a year before going there, that way the maturity has grown and then one is able to handle being called a noob.

I wonder if all the rumors |darc| and crew say are true about development and such. There are always little things like DreamSNES coming back in the forums....

[Veggita2099]

Things I like about DCEmu:

This forum has a great bunch of level-headed, smart people, all from very different walks of life. I also think this forum has a friendlier atmosphere than most, which is one of the reasons I keep posting. #2 on the list is spot on - no one likes joining a community only to be labeled a "n00b" and judged by your post count.

Things I dislike about DCEmu:

Occasionally this forum suffers from a lack of activity... there are a few forums that are virtually dead (DreamSNES, a lot of the development forums, etc). These are just minor quibbles though.

Lies. New people should not go to null. Wait a year before going there, that way the maturity has grown and then one is able to handle being called a noob.

I wonder if all the rumors |darc| and crew say are true about development and such. There are always little things like DreamSNES coming back in the forums....

I don't even go to null anymore. I don't appreciate a mod picking a fight with me and then editing my replies with profanity. I haven't posted in there since.

[jaredfogle]

No real complaints about this forum. Few people seem to go nuts when you say something they don't agree with, but I suppose you have that everywhere.

STFU.

No one here does that.